Understanding visitors to Wales: their profile, needs, expectations and experiences

Why the client needed the research
Visit Wales wished to monitor the profile, expectations, experiences and needs of vistiors to Wales in order to guide their marketing strategy. The biennial survey was awarded to Beaufort Research in 2009 and again in 2011 and took the form of a core survey for the Welsh Government with flexible ‘add-on’ options to enable other organisations to ‘buy in’ to the survey by adding their own specific questions and/or boosting the interviews in their region.
Our approach
To allow for capturing information during the visit and post-visit feedback on the entire experience a two-stage methodology was adopted: this allowed for many more questions to be put to the visitor than a standard visitor survey alone.
Over the two waves more than 10,000 face to face interviews were conducted across over 75 locations. These were followed up by over 1,000 online CAWI (Computer Assisted Web Interviews) with visitors once their visit had finished.
The outcome
Results were delivered at many levels: from top level findings to Visit Wales in the form of Day, Staying and Overseas Visitor reports and a summary presentation, through to individual regional reports and even site level reports. In total more than sixty reports were produced across the two waves, delivering targeted insight and maximising the value from the research.
What the client said
“Beaufort Research have proved their project management skills and flexibility with this project. This has been a difficult project with third parties being incorporated at various stages along the way; however the team at Beaufort have worked this into the original plans seamlessly” (Ella Hastings, Senior Research Officer, Visit Wales)